Appearance  This one came out of the giant champagne bottle a pristine orange in color with a slight darkish-brown hue. The head was huge and fluffy. These bubble are very tight, clinging together as they slowly dissipated from the top of the liquid.

Smell  I know its an often overused phrase, but I could LITERALLY smell this from across the kitchen. I dont know the vintage, but this one has aged past the light, purely lemony nose that divulges the youth of a less-mature Gueuze. The malt base is significant, the farm light but noticeable, and the spices very musty.

Taste  This sour ball really puckers things up at the taste. The tartness is monstrous at the taste but mated well with the gigantic malt base. There are some good farmy notes in here as well, but not overly so. The sweets are more like powdered sugar than anything else. Together this Gueuze is extremely complex and rich and not for the novice drinker.

Mouthfeel  Heres where I just couldnt get enough. The carbonation is sooo tight and so tingly on the tongue. I dont know how they pack so many bubbles in here. They are not what I call cheap like in champagne. The mouthfeel is collected on this medium to full-bodied ale with some sharp, powdery spicing and even some dryness to keep things interesting.

Drinkability  This is a real sipper and only for the experienced Gueuze drinker. Its a real heavy-hitter and I wouldnt recommend it as a first try for the style. If you like big, explosive farmy sour Belgian Ales though you have to give this baby a whirl.

Update  I popped an 04 vintage in 2006 and it is right on track with my initial review of this gem. The carbonation is huge and tight, the stank blooming from the get go, and the farmy flavors are not to be messed with.

Beginning with a rather burning odor of gasoline or wood alcohol, I was rather worried about my expensive purchase. I decided to give the beer some time, as I would a glass of fine wine. It worked. Whether it was the time, the air, or the warmth of the bar, ten minutes of resting in my glass turned this brew from ethanol to exquisite...that or my nose learned to enjoy the smell of gasoline, which could also be the case.

The aromas are completely overpowering. This beer is highly acidic, very citrusy (limes and lemons mostly), and smells strongly of a pig farm. Mango and pear might be in there too but who really cares. This is more about "nose feel" than odor and this beer brings my nose to life, dresses it in a tux, and tangos it onto stage for a performance of Stomp.

Appearance is yellow-peach, very flakey, with a thick foamy off white head. The carbonation is insane but declines to tolerable levels after a few minutes.

Taste is as wild as an Irish brannigan, sour as the sour candy craze of 1991, bitter like an old English librarian drinking quinine, and as pissed as that old monk on the St. Bernie Bottle.

Mouthfeel can be extrapolated from the rest of this review.

Drinkability goes without saying.

Update: 1997 vintage consumed at the brewery on 8-18-08. The bottle quite literally had a spider on the webbed cork when it came to the table. :) It was every bit as good as the newer vintages and then some. This one CAN handle age very well. Buttery with full lemon notes.

Opened as part of a mini sour tasting, one of the most classic gueuzes out there - very excited to finally try this one after the bottle had been teasing me for so long. Pours a slightly hazy copper color with little bits of gold that streamline the edges. A soapy and bubbly white head grows and recedes in one fluid motion, leaving only a small bit of lacing at the very top of the glass.

Quite a bit of fruit skin sourness hits me on the initial whiff - very tart in character and lightly acidic, with a small amount of lacto behind it all. Some very mild hops show up, grassy and herbal, and add a very slight bitterness that extends the tartness into the realm of astringency, just for a brief moment. Tartly bitter. Is that a real thing?

Lots of funky yeast in this one, too - it's got that characteristic smell of Belgian gueuze to it. The sweaty sock funk it strong in the start and comes out even more as the beer rises in temp. A touch of finishing oak and wet hay, jammin' on the barnyard walls. Funky, funky, funky, reaching for damp and dirty blankets in the middle of a barnyard floor.

The taste starts off with a nice tartness, but it's definitely not as sour as I thought it would be, especially after smelling it. For a gauge, it's slightly less tart than Cantillon's Gueuze, for those who may have had that before this. After the initial sour apple and stone fruit skins, a mild astringency bites the tip of the tongue and quickly gives way to the funkadelic flavors. You can taste Belgium in this beer.

Drub, musky and funk yeast plagues the aftertaste, spread across a canvas of burnt oak - the barrel comes out hard in the end. Really dry overall, especially in the finish, with an easily discernible, funky bitterness upon fading out. By the final sip, oak seems to be one of the heaviest flavors of the aftertaste, and that's what I'm left with after the beer is gone. Not bad. Pretty thin bodied, crisp, wet, and sharp mouth feel, lots of carbonation.

Definitely a great gueuze, and it was interesting to see the differences in the style between this and the Cantillon gueuze (they were enjoyed back-to-back). This one was not quite as sour/tart and the oak/funk was a bit more forward. Both good in their own ways, no doubt about that. If you're on the fence about sours, try this one along with the Cantillon gueuze (if you can get/find them). If those don't convert you, then you'll probably never like sours.

EDIT: 9/4/2013

After having many, many more bottles of this, the variation is lovely. Sometimes it's much funkier, sometimes it's much more tart, but it's always delicious. I still think I prefer Cantillon's original gueuze to this one, but hey - I can still find this stuff on the shelves occasionally... win!

Flavor- The first thing that strikes me is the lovely fresh grain flavors that so rarely pop out in these beers. Brisk cracked wheat, doughy, tart, with a nice bright but lightly toasty barley husk note. Possibly this is a character helped along by the oak. Honey suckle and white tea notes just rarely break through a refreshing tartness. Again, not complex, but very nice. Suggestion of nutmeg, again, probably oak-derived.

Clear honey color with lots of bubbles that form a dense just off-white head in my tulip glass. Head reduces to a thin layer but leaves some nice sheet lacing behind.

Sour, funky aroma (who would have thought) with some dry grape undertones. Not overly complex.

I took a sip of this and I was immediately reminded of this wild, deep purple-skinned grape that grows in the Southeast, a muscadine. My great-granddad had a vine trained in his backyard, and I'd eat a ton of them whenever I was over in early fall. My granddad made wine out of these, too, like many other southern homemade wine makers. I can't get past how much this beer tastes like these slightly sour, tart wild grapes. The dryness and slight acid from the (probably bacteria, wild yeast coated) skin that makes you pucker, followed by a hint of sweetness, and then a lingering clean grape-like fruitness with a bit of earthy, astringency left over on the teeth. Just like eating muscadines; I dont know how else to describe it.

Overall, not super sour or tart. Thin to medium-thin mouthfeel with a bit of effervesence. A solid gueze in any book. Good stuff, and quite the surprise in the flavor for me.

A - After a nice pop as the cork comes out, pours a clear light copper with almost three fingers of dense white head. Head has excellent retention. Some lacing is left behind.

S - Aromas of oak, a bit of green apple and nice lemon presence, and a bit musty.

T - Nice tart beginning to the taste, with a good lemon and lemon zest presence. Musty, but in a relatively subdued way. Finish is very dry with a big tannin presence. Excellent.

M - Mouthfeel is light and crisp, and quite dry. Very refreshing.

O - Excellent geuze. Must/funk presence is nice, and much more subtle than something like Hanssenns Oude Geuze (which I also really enjoy), leading to a more refreshing drinking experience than some other geuzes.

Do you remember when you first discovered "real" beer? When you found yourself on a quest for the "Elizabethan ideal" of beer - found yourself believing there was some sort of perfect "ur-beer" that was the embodiment of all that is good about beer? As time went by you lost that dream and decided that perfection was unobtainable and that, instead, it was about the journey?

Well... shockingly it turns out that this was not an unrealistic romantic dream. There is perfection - and this beer proves the dream to be attainable.

Popping the cork results in a loud, champagne-like "pop" and whisps of smoky mist. Before you can even pour this beauty you are assaulted by the aroma. I'd say "horse blanket" but it's more like "sheep" than "horse." Pungent, ripe and astringent notes riding on a bed of fruit. Pouring the beer results in dense streamers of "tiny bubbles" (grin) rising from all sides of the glass and building a perfect, frothing white pillow of a head.

Upon pouring you discover those initial aromas were just a subtle hint of what was in store. Astonishingly powerful nose - this is not an "apologetic" Lambic. This is not a "dumbed down" Geuze.The acidic fruit tartness goes beyond merely bright and becomes almost abrasive in the nose. Pungent barnyard aromas of ripe cheese and funk swim in the astringent fruits - Wow!!

And then you sip... Lights shine from the heavens, a smile breaks out on your face, you look at the bottle, at the amount remaining, at your companions... perhaps you could kill one of them and take their share. Initial citric straw flavours with an underpinning of exotic fruit lead into an explosive middle palatte burst of unbelievably tart and strong lemony grapefruit and green apple tastes. It would be perhaps TOO astringent were it not for the solid foundation of lactic-acid like, funky cheese flavours that soften the bite and warm the tongue.The finish goes on forever with a lovely spumante acidic dry bite that makes your lips feel like they've been glued to your teeth. "Must... drink... more..." At the very very end you, again, get a hint of barnyard and some light dry toasting oak. This is a full spectrum, every tastebud on board, whole palette experience.

The ne plus ultra de Lambic indeed. Unforgiving, unapologetic, this beer is The One.